Historians in the News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

Source: CBS News
10-28-12

60 Minutes profiles Barry Landau, the thief who stole priceless treasures from the National Archives

American history is housed in the National Archives. Forty-four of them, spread all over the country. They contain documents, photos, maps, artifacts that go back to our founding fathers. Every school kid knows about some of them: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Bill of Rights; but there are millions of others, from the patent for Michael Jackson's moonwalking shoes, to Benedict Arnold's loyalty oath.Many are priceless treasures which means they attract not only scholars but thieves; more and more of them all the time. Getting to the crooks before they get to the archives has become a new priority in law enforcement.No one knows more about this than Barry Landau - a self-described presidential historian and one of the foremost collectors of presidential memorabilia. That's because Barry Landau carried out the largest theft of these treasures in American history. Prosecutors say he is one of the most accomplished conmen they've ever encountered....

Source: NYT
10-26-12

Jacques Barzun Dies at 104; Cultural Critic Saw the Sun Setting on the West

Jacques Barzun, the distinguished historian, essayist, cultural gadfly and educator who helped establish the modern discipline of cultural history and came to see the West as sliding toward decadence, died Thursday night in San Antonio, where he lived. He was 104.His death was announced by Arthur Krystal, Barzun’s friend and the executor of his estate.Mr. Barzun was a man of boundless curiosity, monumental productivity and manifold interests, encompassing both Berlioz and baseball. It was a life of the mind first cultivated more than a century ago in a childhood home outside Paris that became an avant-garde salon....In his 2000 book, “From Dawn to Decadence,” he argued that one of the great virtues of the West was its character as a “mongrel civilization”: over the course of its development, it was resiliently constructed out of dozens of national cultures.He traced periods of rise and fall in the Western saga, and contended that another fall was near — one that could cause “the liquidation of 500 years of civilization.” This time the decline would be caused not by scientism and absolutism, he maintained, but by an internal crisis in the civilization itself, which he believed had come to celebrate nihilism and rebellion.

Source: Slate
10-24-12

Peter Kornbluh on drawing the wrong conclusions from the Cuban Missile Crisis

Speaking with Slate's Robin Wright on Bloggingheads.

Source: Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker
10-29-12

The Renaissance of Geographic History

...As a form of poetry, space history is very old. Milton sang of “the Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty,” implying there was a reason that the Swiss were freer than the French, and the idea that geography shapes character is essential to Montesquieu: southern peoples are sweaty and stolid; mountain dwellers are springy and defiant, and so on. France, in his view, is ideal, because it is, like Mama Bear’s porridge, neither too cold nor too hot. (Actually, it is too cold, but the myth that the French live in a beautifully temperate climate is impossible for them to surrender, even in January.) In recent years, space history has been armed with data and detail and an urge to explain everything. Like the “naked ape” anthropology of the nineteen-seventies, sure in its belief that the missionary position in sex explains all of human bonding, the new space history has imperial ambitions. Russians always want a warm-weather port and will always have a huddled, suspicious culture, whether Tsarist, Soviet, or Putinish. Ideology is mere summer clouds above an unchanging terrain.

Source: Independent (UK)
10-23-12

Grace Dent is "rooting for a Conrad Black hat-trick"

Newsnight, Boulton & Co, Have I Got News For You; this week is shaping up to be quite the media carousel for convicted multi-million-pound fraudster Conrad Black. Or more namely, Baron Black of Crossharbour, PC, Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great. I’m unsure if Conrad uses his full Game of Thrones-style title when making restaurant bookings. Or if Conrad and his fragrant wife Barbara even reserve tables at all, so certain are they of their place at society’s high table. I imagine the pair simply pitching up at Dabbous on a Saturday night, eschewing the six-month wait, then glowering imperviously until they’re provided with beef tartare.Love or loathe Black, his appearances this week show he’s a tricksy, Teflon-coated character. In a Wes Anderson film, he’d be played by Bill Murray and his square-ups with news-show hosts would give us great glee. “I’m here selling books not to answer your somewhat predictable questions,” he quacked at Adam Boulton yesterday. Well, Black knew it was Boulton by the end of the interview – he asked to be reminded of Boulton’s name mid chat. I defy anyone not to find that slightly delicious....

Source: AHA Today
10-22-12

AHA Roundtable: The Presidential Debate of October 22, 2012

The Respondents:“If the White House treats Iran, as Governor Romney claimed last night, ‘the same way we treated . . . apartheid . . . South Africa,’ then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his regime…have nothing to worry about." Read more… —Carol Anderson, Emory University“As an international lawyer, perhaps the most surprising moment of this debate for me was when Romney suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be ‘indicted’ under the UN’s Genocide Convention for incitement. Seriously?” Read more… —Elizabeth Borgwardt, Washington University in St. Louis

Source: Public Radio International
10-22-12

Julian Zelizer reflects on George McGovern's enduring impact on presidential politics

George McGovern, in 1972, lost his bid to be elected president in a landslide. But four years earlier, he led a commission that totally changed how presidential party nominees are chosen. That system remains in place to day and is, perhaps, one of McGovern's most enduring legacies. He died this weekend, at age 90....Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer said McGovern played a key role in changing the rules of politics conventions."After 1968, the Democrats setup a commission to reform the nomination process. And McGovern is a key figure heading up that commission," he said....

Source: Catholic Online
10-23-12

Tim Stanley: Obama's performance in third debate described as 'rude and unpresidential

According to U.S. historian Tim Stanley, Mitt Romney won the third presidential debate. Stanley says that while Romney looked like a proper head of state, Obama's antics made him "look like a lawyer," at the third and final debate in Boca Raton, Florida, last night.Stanley says the debate was encapsulated in a single exchange. When Romney says that the U.S. Navy now has fewer ships than it did in 1916, Obama glibly retorted, "I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works."You mentioned the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military's changed." Audience response was favorable, as everyone laughed....

Source: Financial Times (UK)
10-19-12

Gove UK history reforms under attack by Hilary Mantel

Michael Gove, education secretary, is proposing “pernicious” reforms to history teaching in schools, according to Hilary Mantel, the novelist who this week won the Man Booker prize for a second time.In an interview with the Financial Times, the author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies , which are set in the 16th century, said: “I don’t like the idea that we’re going to go back to spoon-feeding children with a cut-and-dried and patriotic version [of history] . . . One telling is not enough, particularly not one telling done de haut en bas....

Source: Brown Daily Herald
10-23-12

Q&A with professor Robert Self

Robert Self, an associate professor of history, recently published a new book entitled “All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s.” Last summer, he also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that assessed the state of the contemporary Republican party in the context of social reform movements in the 1960s. The Herald sat down with him to talk about his work, the evolution of politics over the past half-century and the current election cycle. The Herald: What drew you to the topic of your new book? Self: I was struck by how much of our contemporary politics involved questions of gender, sexuality, family and how … most of my own life, this seemed to be a principal terrain on which Americans talked about the country, what mattered and the national government. And I wanted to understand why that was the case. And second … there had emerged within American politics a distinction that I found to be artificial between culture and values on the one hand and economics on the other. All of my training as a historian convinced me that these were not separate things, and so I wanted to try to understand how they came to be talked about as separate....

Source: Federation of American Scientists
10-22-12

Historian Anna K. Nelson, RIP

We were sad to learn that Professor Anna K. Nelson, a tenacious and effective advocate for improved public access to national security records, passed away last month.For decades, Prof. Nelson argued for improved declassification practices in almost every venue imaginable, from congressional hearings to the most obscure and transient advisory bodies.  As a professor of history at American University, she insisted that government records were public property and that access to such records was one of the foundations of good citizenship.Among many other posts, she served as a presidentially-appointed member of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board, which was tasked to oversee the declassification of records concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.  Because of the perseverance of Dr. Nelson and her colleagues, that Board was uniquely productive in overcoming longstanding barriers to declassification, particularly those pertaining to intelligence agency records....

Source: University of Virginia
10-16-12

Miller Center Conference Oct. 26-27 to Examine Presidential History

In anticipation of Election Day, some of the nation’s top social scientists and historians will offer their unique perspectives on U.S. presidential history at a two-day conference convened by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center Oct. 26-27.The conference, “Recasting Presidential History,” seeks to jump-start a new generation of scholarship about the presidency that capitalizes on key insights of leading scholars, many of whom have not concentrated on the presidency. Groundbreaking work in sub-disciplines, ranging from cultural to social history, have created new frameworks that can inform and enrich work on the presidencyKey themes of the conference will include how presidents have tried to reform economic, social, global and political structures; how presidents have shaped and been shaped by cultural trends; how presidents have portrayed and sought to harness the media; and how they have interacted with the world.

Source: WSJ
10-16-12

WSJ profiles the N-YHS's Fellows at the Academy for Teachers

Listening to Kenneth Jackson, a professor of history at Columbia University, lecture 15 top New York City public school history teachers at the New-York Historical Society on Monday morning, I was reminded of another great history teacher, Charles Cook....[H]e glowed even when it came to eras in which he didn't have a vested interest. He had a particular passion for the Civil War. In common with other great educators, he never talked down to his students; he never taught by rote; his talent seemed merely a felicitous byproduct of his passion for his subject.It was obvious that Mr. Jackson, a former president of the New-York Historical Society, also has the gift. As he discussed the causes of World War I, the teachers, most of them from high schools and a few from middle schools, were assembled around him, seminar-style, in the Society's soaring library. They included representatives from the Bronx Academy of Letters; the Beacon School; J.H.S. 157 Stephen A. Halsey; Midwood High School; the High School for Environmental Studies; Stuyvesant High School; I.S. 190; and the High School of American Studies at Lehman College.

Source: John McNeill for AHA Today
10-21-12

Fundraising Begins for Jerry Bentley Prize in World History

The American Historical Association invites donations to endow a Jerry Bentley Book Prize in World History, which will honor Professor Bentley’s tireless efforts to promote the field of world history, and his signal contributions to it, over a career tragically cut short by his recent death. Over the past 20 years, the field of world history has developed into one of the most vibrant and energetic areas of the discipline—with a growing volume of books and monographs published in the field, and an expanding presence in history departments and doctoral programs. Professor Bentley played an indispensable role in the development of the field. He began his career as a scholar of Renaissance Italy, but quickly became one of the leading figures in the world history movement of recent decades. He was the founding editor of the Journal of World History, and served as its editor from the first issue in 1990 until shortly before his death. He wrote one of the landmark works in the field in 1993, a study of cultural interactions within Eurasia entitled Old World Encounters. Through his work with the World History Association, the College Board Advanced Placement program, and his teaching at the University of Hawaii, he helped to elevate world history into a thriving field of both scholarship and pedagogy.

Source: AHA Today
10-15-12

Announcing the Latest Robert H. Smith Seminar: The Supreme Court in the Age of Holmes and Brandeis

As the U.S. Supreme Court returns for the fall, it is therefore fitting to highlight the latest Robert H. Smith seminar, titled: “The Supreme Court in the Age of Holmes and Brandeis”, co-sponsored by the Institute for Constitutional History and the AHA.  This six-week seminar will examine the influence of two men—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Louis Dembitz Brandeis—on American constitutional development from 1902 to 1939.  Although the phrase “Holmes and Brandeis dissenting” led many people to believe that they shared a common jurisprudential philosophy, the differences between them are as important as the areas in which they agreed.  We will look at the biographies of the two men, the classical legal thought that dominated the Court throughout most of this period, the important cases in which they wrote—mainly in dissent—and the influence of those opinions on subsequent cases.  Instructors include Melvin I. Urofsky, professor of law and public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University, and John Fabian Witt, the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

Source: Allen Mikaelian for AHA Perspectives
10-11-12

The Vice Presidential Debate of October 11, 2012: AHA Roundtable

Allen Mikaelian is Associate Editor of the AHA magazine "Perspectives" and media relations coordinator for the American Historical Association. Do vice presidential debates matter? That seemed to be the question of the day, the one that dominated the airwaves before and after last night’s debate. From our perspective as historians, we are certain that they do matter, even if they don’t generate a bump in the polls or a defining moment in the campaign. For the historian, they are responses to long-standing trends and further evidence of the importance of understanding the past. Our Roundtable on the vice presidential debate features historians responding as historians. Beyond questions over who won and who had their facts in order are questions about where the candidates’ ideas come from, why certain important discussions were left out, and how to cut through rhetorical poses in order to understand real policy possibilities. These are the sorts of questions historians and historical thinking can answer. Last night’s debate did matter, and our panelists can help us understand how. —Allen Mikaelian, Associate Editor

Source: National Security Archive at GWU
10-11-12

New Book Shows Cuban Missile Crisis Unresolved Until November 22, 1962

Washington, DC, October 10, 2012 – In November 1962, Cuba was preparing to become the first nuclear power in Latin America—at the time when the Kennedy administration thought that the Cuban Missile Crisis was long resolved and the Soviet missiles were out. However, the Soviet and the Cuban leadership knew that the most dangerous weapons of the crisis—tactical Lunas and FKRs—were still in Cuba. They were battlefield weapons, which would have been used against the U.S. landing forces if the EXCOMM had decided on an invasion, not the quarantine. The Soviets intended for them to stay in Cuba secretly because they were not part of the Kennedy-Khrushchev understandings, while the Cubans wanted to keep them to defend against another U.S. invasion. But Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan brought the final resolution to the Cuban Missile crisis on November 22, 1962 in his four-hour conversation with the top Cuban leadership: the tactical nuclear weapons would have to leave Cuba.

Source: Chicago Sun-Times
10-7-12

Women’s history gets digitized, organized

A local historian is digitizing and organizing rarely seen documents that will open whole new areas of on-line research in women’s history.Kristen Gwinn-Becker, founder and CEO of HistoryIT (HistoryIT.com) in Evanston, has leveraged her creative and humanities background to advise the National Women’s History Museum on upgrading its online educational exhibits and create an easily searchable database of women’s biographies.The museum makes its information public on its website (NWHM.org) and through newsletters and outreach programs. It is working to build an actual bricks-and-mortar museum next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C....

Source: IrishCentral.com
10-9-12

William Chafe book claims Bill Clinton asked Hillary for a divorce in 1990

A new book by historian William Chafe, entitled “Bill and Hillary,” dissects the couple’s marriage  and alleges that Bill Clinton asked Hillary for a divorce in 1990 before he embarked on his long- shot bid for the presidency.William Chafe is currently a Professor of History at Duke University and a highly regarded historian.The book, reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times, alleges that in 1990 Bill wanted to leave Hillary for an energy-company executive named Marilyn Jo Jenkins.Chafe says that Bill asked Hillary for a divorce but the future first lady refused....

Source: Zeenews.com (India)
10-10-12

Free India would have fragmented without Gandhi: British historian

Thiruvanathapuram: Without Mahatma Gandhi, free India would have fragmented further while Pakistan`s existence is "difficult to conceive" without Mohammad Ali Jinnah, says a British historian who has contrasted the two leaders in his latest book.The effect of individuals in historical developments can be debatable but the fact of one free India and Pakistan is difficult to imagine without these two leaders, Roderick Matthews, author of "Jinnah VS Gandhi", told IANS in an interview at the just-concluded 5th Kovalam Literary Festival here.Matthews said there were alternatives to Gandhi within the Congress but none of them had his unique style."If there was no Gandhi, there were three or four Congress leaders who could have stepped forward. Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das.... or even (Subhas Chandra) Bose, could have replaced the Gokhale-Tilak generation in the 1920s," the Oxford-educated Matthews said....